The Women's Studies Research Center is one of my favorite places on campus. It's out of the way, it's cozy, it features a terrific art gallery, and it has a strange alcove filled with fluffy pillows on the way to the bathroom. It also hosts some of the best arts events that Brandeis offers. One of these events was this Thursday's "Thresholds and Passages: Readings of New Poetry and Prose," which was staged in the WSRC's Epstein Lecture Hall. Seven female members of the WSRC's Scholars-in-Residence program read from their recently published or in-progress works of poetry and prose at the event. Scholars-in-residence must be currently working on pieces that somehow incorporate the female experience or cover issues relating to gender.

Before the readings, Emily Corbató, a photographer, writer and musician, played six classical piano pieces in the WSRC atrium. People coming to attend the reading strolled in and gathered to listen before the event, which was attended by about 30 people, primarily women from the Brandeis and Waltham communities.

Shulamit Reinharz, the founder and director of the WSRC and wife of former University President Jehudah Reinharz, began by introducing each of the authors and sharing a bit about their professional and personal lives. Many of the writers have other careers, including a lawyer and a former architect. The words "multi-talented" and "reinvented" were used repeatedly.

The first woman to read from her work was Nancer Ballard, who has recently been experimenting with creative nonfiction. Ballard read two excerpts from her memoir-in-progress, titled The Odd Direction of Heaven. The stories were told from the point of view of a young woman in a psychiatric hospital recovering from a suicide attempt. The woman and her roommate at the hospital discuss their various attempts at death. One detail—the younger woman's precise "56 pills" in answer to how she had attempted to kill herself—was particularly horrifying. Ballard narrated her work with the dexterity of a stage actress, subtly changing her voice's pitch and her mannerisms depending on the character that was speaking.

The second excerpt from the memoir focused on the central character's quest for meaning in her bleak life. She is told that what really keeps people from killing themselves is not hope or love, but rather curiosity. This was not a sentiment I'd heard or thought of before, but I found myself agreeing with it as the story progressed.

The second reading at "Thresholds" was actually a work by two authors poets, the Colombian-born Clara Ronderos and her American writing partner Mary G. Berg. Together, the two women translated Ronderos' poems from her collection Estaciones en exilio (Seasons in Exile) from Spanish into English.

Ronderos first read her poems, which invoked nostalgia for one's homeland, in Spanish. Then Berg read the translation. Ronderos' voice was strong and clear, and she dipped into a more raw tone for important lines. Berg's speech was more familiar and less varied in tone.

It was interesting to hear the differences between the two languages, both in literal meaning and emotional content. Berg pointed out that in Spanish, the word "en" can mean both "of" and "in," but for the English title, they had to choose which word to use.

The youngest of the authors, Rachel Munn, also read poetry, though her poems seemed to flow more like short prose pieces without a set rhyme scheme or rhythm like a traditional poem. Munn began her professional life as an architect but has since focused her interests in physical structures, time, Judaism and memorials into Winter Street, a Year, a collection of nonfiction poems about her family's move into a rundown farmhouse in Boston. The poems were full of detail about the memorable occasions the family experienced in the house, including a birthday party and a seder. The works were full of rich simile—Munn wrote the line "skin like an elephant" to describe the rough sand of a beach near the home, and explained that the two speakers in one poem "run together like a watercolor" into one single voice. By the end of Munn's reading, the listeners were left with a bittersweet sense of the love that existed in the house and the loss of the relatives who didn't live long enough to make it there due to the family's experience in the Holocaust.

The last author, and the one that the audience seemed to enjoy the most, was Naomi Myrvaagnes, a former writing professor. She read from her novel-in-progress about Rabbi Felice Whitman, a religious leader struggling to connect her lackluster bat-mitzvah students with their Jewish heritage. The selection Myrvaagnes read was a satirical account of one lesson the rabbi had with a 13-year-old student Rachel.

The young girl is having a difficult time with her Torah portion, and Whitman attempts to reveal the essence of the biblical story while simultaneously parsing out snarky comments such as "emotion was paralyzing [Rachel's] prepubescent brain," about her pupil's attempts to connect the ancient text with her own life and "drinking might lubricate relationships, but food fortifies them," when describing the Rabbi's attempts to gain Rachel's trust by sharing her chips. This story was by far the most comical of those included in "Thresholds and Passages," and many of the event's attendees were breathless with laughter by the end.

"Thresholds and Passages" afforded its listeners the unique opportunity to hear from authors who are still in the process of completing their projects and editing them for publication. Judging by the readings that I heard, I would recommend you pick up the works of any of these talented women. The WSRC's Scholars-in-Residence program is clearly getting something right.